Google said Tuesday that it is entering the Colorado quantum realm in what seems like a very tiny way: It hired a quantum physicist in Boulder to speed up development of its first quantum computer.
But by adding University of Colorado and federal lab researcher Adam Kaufman, Google is taking a much bigger step in the industry. The company also announced Tuesday that it is expanding into a competing type of quantum computer development based on neutral atoms.
Kaufman, known for his work in controlling neutral atoms, “is one of the key experts in this area,” said Charina Chou, chief operating officer of Google Quantum AI, which has been working for more than a decade to build a quantum computer to tackle the world’s unsolvable problems. Such computers have accelerated computing performance that could lead to improvements to cancer and health treatments, AI accuracy and better tools to address climate change.
Adam Kaufman (left) inspects an optical atomic clock at JILA on the University of Colorado campus with students Nelson Darkwah Oppong, Alec Cao and Theo Lukin Yelin.. (Patrick Campbell, University of Colorado)Google has long focused on developing quantum computers based on superconducting, which uses electronic circuits to mimic the behavior of atoms and requires near absolute-zero temperatures (and large cryogenic refrigerators). Advances in neutral-atoms technology, which doesn’t need the large refrigerators and uses actual atoms, however, led Google to invest in both types of technologies in hopes of building a quantum computer faster.
“Over the last two or three years, it became evident to us that there were some really interesting things happening in neutral-atom quantum computing in particular,” Chou said. “We’ve just been continuing to track the field and looking at the most promising places where we can collaborate or even bring people onto our team. And Adam definitely stands out as a really important expert in the field.”
Kaufman, who was unavailable for an interview, has been affiliated with CU and its joint research center with the National Institute of Standards and Technology known as JILA, since 2009. He will maintain a lab at JILA, and he’ll hire a team of hardware specialists to expand on the work of building a neutral-atoms computer, according to the company.
Kaufman’s team will start with about 10 people who need to be located in Colorado, Chou said.
That’s a change from Google Quantum AI’s main operations, which employ “hundreds” in the Seattle and Los Angeles regions. This will be its first quantum presence in Colorado. The company has an unrelated engineering hub in Boulder.
“Google’s decision to root its neutral-atom effort in Boulder — home to JILA, NIST, CU and the region housing America’s designated Quantum Tech Hub — reflects what we’ve long known: The Mountain West doesn’t just produce world-leading quantum science, it produces the talent and industry ecosystem to take it to market,” said Zachary Yerushalmi, CEO of Elevate Quantum, the organization set up to help build out the state’s quantum workforce and support companies.
Boulder-Denver region is a hub for quantum
The Denver-Boulder region is already a hub for quantum, thanks largely to a federal government decision in the 1950s to plunk NIST’s research facility in Boulder to specialize in quantum measurements to measure the most precise and sensitive things in the world. NIST later partnered with CU to create JILA. Since then, numerous companies have sprung up or moved to Colorado to access the expertise and commercialize the science.
A handful of other companies involved in superconducting and neutral atoms also call the region home, including Quantinuum in Broomfield; Atom Computing, which has a manufacturing facility in Boulder; and Louisville-based Infleqtion, which went public in February and raised $550 million. But some of the bigger names in quantum tech, like IBM and Google, had minimal presence.
“This is a competitive environment and fundamentally for Boulder, it is important to be recognized as an ecosystem (and) be seen as a place where the workforce exists and knowledge exists,” said Massimo Ruzzene, CU’s vice chancellor of research and innovation. “From our perspective, one of the things we really want to have is some corporate presence in Boulder to drive the startup ecosystem. I don’t know what Google’s plans are, but just having an initial presence, a foothold in the region, is very promising.”
Chou said Kaufman will also continue working with JILA and CU “because we see this as an intersection of how do you make something that’s like a scientific experiment real and into a commercial product. Keeping those ties with JILA and CU Boulder for Adam was a massive plus.”
Google is considering finding lab space at CU or at its Boulder office or possibly even building something new.
“We definitely want the hardware effort in neutral atoms to be based in Colorado,” she said.
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